Empire of Wild

by Cherie Dimaline

  “Jeez, Ajean, we need that to play.” Philomene tried to snatch it back, but Ajean pulled it out of reach.

  “If you’re gonna go walking all over the Bay, you need to take this with you,” the old woman insisted, flapping it at her.

  Joan stayed by the door. “Why would I need an ace?”

  “Not just any ace, the ace of spades. It makes the rogarou weak, gives you a chance to get away to try to switch him back.”

  Joan looked at her mere, who nodded, supporting Ajean in this.

  “No, I think I’m good,” Joan said. She pushed against the screen door and then made a break for it, calling back to them as it slammed, “And I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  * * *

  The road curved as it climbed around the water’s edge and past the small church where her parents had been married. The trees hung limp in the heat. Joan soon grew sticky with sweat, crunching along the gravel at the road’s edge. Like lazy flower girls, birds too hot to fly rustled their wings and threw half-hearted chirps at her.

  For the first time in memory, she felt completely alone. No pedestrians, not even any sidewalks. No friends, no grandmother, no aunties. She felt her independence in all her limbs and stretched in the dusty heat. She was a grown-ass lady and she could do what she liked, and what she liked was to take a casual stroll to her cousin’s house. She hummed her freedom under her breath, stopping here and there to lop the heads off downy dandelions with a thin stick.

  A sudden cloud covered the sun and immediately the breeze ran cold. And just as sudden, she didn’t feel so alone. She walked faster. Why hadn’t she called Tammy and asked her to meet her halfway? She came to the split in the trees where a dirt road led to old Pitou’s boat shed. On a scratched post, a mailbox leaned precariously. And beside it, watching her with marble eyes, was a black, short-haired dog.

  Jesus! She shuffled back a step. The creature didn’t move. Didn’t shift its gaze. Was it a statue? One of those weird cement animals that people decorated their garden beds with? It was glossy, vivid, not weathered at all. She stepped forward and reached out an unsteady hand toward it. “Good dog.” Her brain screamed from somewhere in the back of her skull: No one’s lived at Pitou’s for years. What’s a dog doing here?

  And then the creature dipped its head, tucking its narrow snout into its chest. In a moment its legs unfolded, covered in dark fur and bent like a dog’s, but much too long. It stood up on its rear paws, which were the size of an adult’s splayed hand, revealing a torso that was sleek and wrapped in fur but without the barrel of protruding canine ribs. This chest was flatter and wider, muscled like a man’s. The face was dominated by glint and wet—bright yellow eyes rimmed with a pink third lid, and a mouth rammed with splintery teeth, too many to comprehend.

  She took in all these details in the nanosecond before she ran like the devil himself was at her heels, her arms pumping, dust in her lungs, ice at the back of her neck. She didn’t stop until she got to Dusome’s Garage, closed because it was Sunday and Dusome saved his Sundays for fishing. Joan huddled there, in front of the padlocked door, catching her breath, eyeing the road for the impossible black dog.

  Each rustle of branches sent her spinning to check all around her. Eventually she began to pace in the driveway. Tammy’s was too far to go it alone. She’d be easy prey. He’d chase her down with ease. How was she going to get home? She thought about heading back to her auntie’s, but then she’d have to pass Pitou’s again. A rogarou could tear you to bits. She’d heard countless stories about him, hungry for lone travellers—a dark emergency born of any number of transgressions. So many stories. And that’s where she went now, looking for an answer.

  Ajean had told her once when she was really little that there was a way to disarm Rogarou. “Remind him he is a man under it all. You can do it by making the thing bleed. Make him remember.”

  Joan found one of Dusome’s old wrenches rusted to ruin at the back of the garage, tested its weight in her hand, even swung it a few times. Convinced it was a formidable weapon, she started back down the road to her auntie’s. She was sure she saw the rogarou’s shadow stretched across the pavement, his fur stiff even in the breeze.

  “Alright then,” she said out loud. “Let’s see if I can jog your memory.”

  From behind her came the sound of a car. She watched it pass, wondering if she should call out to warn them, or better yet, to ask for a ride back to safety. It slowed down as it passed her, then came to a rolling stop. She picked up her pace, striding toward the shiny black door. Just then, a man stuck his head out the passenger side window. The way he looked at her, the way his lips curled into a cruel smile, caused her to stop walking, raise the wrench and square her shoulders. After a few seconds more of staring at her, the man pulled his head back inside and the car drove on.

  When it made the turn onto Marina Road, she took off running, not pausing to more than glance at Pitou’s lopsided mailbox where it stood alone and harmless at the side of the road. She fell twice because of the awkward swing of the heavy wrench as she ran, got back up and kept going, refusing to drop her weapon.

  When she pushed into the kitchen, out of breath, the old ladies were still seated at the table. They didn’t ask her about why she was back. They didn’t question the wrench she put down by the shoe rack. They just dealt her into the game and started a new story. When she’d had some tea and her heart slowed enough for words, she told them all about it.

  She’d since told herself many versions of that afternoon—it was a dog, it was her imagination, it was shadows. Eventually, those hours walking around the Bay, running into the rogarou, became so blurred they were lost to her conscious mind.

  But like many things forgotten in childhood, they lived on in the way she behaved. She never walked alone. She thought she’d been told Pitou’s was haunted and so she avoided that side road as much as she could. She feared men in unknown cars.

  But now, the rogarou was back and very, very real. And like all things real, it could be killed.

  * * *

  Two weeks later she got the call that set everything in motion.

  “What time did the churchies show up?” Joan asked, her cellphone held to her ear with a shaking hand. She bent her toes around the metal railing of the kitchen stool, and her knees bounced in quick, nervous bursts.

  “Rocky says they pulled into Hook River around two,” said Bee. “He called while he was having lunch. I made him stop eating fast food on the road. He has to at least find a Denny’s and get a salad instead of fries. It’s why so many truckers are fat, you know—eating on the go like that.” Bee’s TV was loud in the background. “Hey, Wendy Williams got a new weave. You should see it, all ringlets and hairspray like your grade eight picture. Man, that shit was horrid. Remember?”

  Joan let the comment go. Bee could have that one, a small payback for her diligence. Joan had been asking everyone she knew to let her know as soon as they heard anything about holy rollers in the area, telling them she was looking for a long-lost friend. It wasn’t a lie, not really. So when Rocky noticed people in the next booth talking about a Jesus revival, he called Bee.

  Hook River was a three-hour drive away. “What time can you be by to pick up Zeus?” Joan asked. Zeus had been stuck to her tighter than usual since Mere was killed. “I want to get on the road soon.”

  Bee ignored the question. Joan could hear her other three kids crashing around in the background. Apparently someone took a Lego to the eye. She asked, “Why are you so interested in getting religion now, anyways?”

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “Shut up, youse kids! Hermes, I swear to god, if you throw one more…Like what, Joan? Jesus? All you’re going to find in that tent is crazies with loose change to throw around. Come to think of it, maybe I should go. I could use a sugar daddy.”

  Bee could pry all she wanted, but Joan wasn’t going to tell anyone else about Victor until she was sure. She glanced into the living room where
Zeus had his headphones on and a book in hand. “I’ll be gone overnight, so you should really come grab him.”

  “Yeah, but with Rocky on the road, I don’t have anyone to watch the kids. And you know I can’t drive; suspended licence and all. I could call around…”

  “No, it’s okay,” Joan said, wearily, “I’ll drop him off before I go.”

  “Thanks, Joan. You’re the best.” The kids started hollering for their mom. “Seriously, maybe I should come with you. I can be someone else’s salvation for a change.”

  Joan hung up on her and sat a moment under the yellow kitchen lights. They hummed and flickered just enough to make the black-and-white linoleum vibrate. Out of habit, she counted Mere’s thimbles on the wooden wall racks. Twenty-two. Who needed twenty-two thimbles when you only have ten fingers? She reached across the counter and grabbed the rack, shaped to resemble a barn, with twelve individual slots so each thimble had its own room like a lonely child. The final room contained only a circle on the bottom where the dust hadn’t settled. Its thimble had been lost since the day of Mere’s wake. She’d searched for it under the fridge, in the crack of the baseboard, but it had disappeared. The holder looked unfinished. Joan thought of what Mere had told her about beadwork.

  “Do your lines straight, thread tight. But always include an odd man out, a different colour—like red in a sea of white, or blue cut glass in a line of turquoise seed beads. That’s your spirit bead. It’s a prayer for improvement.”

  Eleven thimbles. She’d been alone now for eleven months and twenty-eight days, she thought, as if her solitude was a toddler that required incremental milestones. She could organize her grief this way: one thimble for each month alone, a separate pewter divot to push her solitary moments inside of like a crumb of playdough.

  She walked to the living room and tapped Zeus on the shoulder. He sighed dramatically before closing his worn paperback and pulling his headphones off.

  “Yes?” He rolled his eyes until they met hers. “Can I help you?” He gave her an exaggerated, tight-lipped smirk undone by the roundness of his cheeks.

  “Listen, man, I really appreciate this fifteen-year-old-girl attitude you’re trying out, but can you grab your stuff? I have to hit the road, so I’m going to drive you home.”

  He shrugged. “Fiiine.” He placed the headphones back over his ears and opened the book. “But I really don’t think Flo would be okay with you being on your own, especially not on a road trip. Not now. I can call her and ask? Maybe she’ll want to go with you.”

  “You little shit.”

  He shifted the duct-taped Discman to his lap and pressed the volume button up three clicks. He’d carried that poor thing around since his dad gave it to him and Joan always checked second-hand stores for any new discs he might like. So far Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson were at the top, with “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Whiskey River” duking it out for his favourite song. He sang them both in a high soprano when washing the dishes or knitting one of his famous extra-long scarves.

  She leaned over and kissed his shaggy, dark head, popping his headphones off his ears. She kicked at the full laundry basket by the TV stand. “Pick through this, because there’s some of your stuff in there. Grab enough for two days in case we stay an extra night, or in case you shit yourself.”

  “Ha ha, Auntie. Very funny.” He smiled despite himself, and began rifling through the folded stack.

  “And call Bee and tell her you’re coming with me. I’ll be right back.”

  She left through the back door, the now familiar adrenaline stitching into her chest when she saw the birch trees. She watched her feet shuffling through the grass as she made her way down the hill. Head down was the only way to keep moving forward these days. A breeze came in off the creek and lifted the edges of her hair, causing a shiver down her spine. Passing the firepit, she glanced at the clean barrier rocks.

  The trailer door was unlocked. It opened with a stiff yank, and chimes made out of small souvenir spoons tinkled. She stepped inside and was greeted by the smell of sweetgrass, then a heavy kind of emptiness.

  Mere had spent her time here doing jigsaw puzzles or else preparing food and medicine. On the day after their fight, day one of Victor’s absence, Joan had sat at the table while Mere worked in the kitchen.

  “Here, my girl, wrap that string around the base.” Mere was holding a bundle of small, leafy stems over the tiny sink.

  Joan took up a spool of red twine and unravelled it against the stalks like she’d been shown, not too tight or the stems would bruise, not too loose so they didn’t escape.

  “It’s just, I mean, why would he think it was okay to even bring it up? It’s my land.” Victor hadn’t come home and Joan was sick with worry and electric with anger. She was still in her pyjamas—an old Pabst Blue Ribbon shirt three sizes too big and a pair of black bicycle shorts.

  “Victor, he’s from out west, isn’t it? He didn’t grow up in community, yeah?”

  “He did when he was little, with his mom, but then he went with his dad to Winnipeg.” She cut the twine with a small pair of sewing scissors and knotted it.

  “Sometimes we forget what’s real. For him, he sees a different way of being secure, I suppose.” Mere touched some of the smaller leaves thoughtfully with her pointed fingernail, appreciating the architecture of the plant. “It’s not bad, just not right.”

  Joan sighed, sinking back into the built-in bench around the table. “I guess. But why didn’t he come back last night?” She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Couldn’t even get her man to sleep at home. That’s the way Bee would put it. She’d heard her say it about other couples before. But she was more worried than embarrassed. He’d never done this before. What if he had fucked up? What if he’d got drunk and ended up with someone else and was too mortified in the sober light of day to come home?

  Please don’t let it be that.

  Mere was quiet. She hung the bundle on the thin, white curtain rod over the sink, pushing the lace curtains out of the way. The rod was cheap but it could hold the weight of medicine. Most things could.

  Joan went on. “I just mean, like, how do you not know what your wife would feel about something like that? Sell my father’s land, Jesus. Why? Land’s the only thing I would buy if I had money.” She fiddled with her phone, opening and closing the main screen, checking that the volume was turned all the way up. The land wasn’t the most pressing issue on her mind, but she didn’t want to keep giving the other thing oxygen. Not out loud, anyways. Had he left for good? They never fought, but would he really walk away after one argument? How well did she know him if this was even a possibility?

  “Can you track him?” Mere was pouring water over tea bags in chipped mugs.

  “Like, through the bush? It’s not like he went out on a hunt. And it’s not like I’m all old-timey. Jeez.”

  Mere paused, the kettle held aloft. “No, dummy, on your phone, there.”

  “Holy shit!” She jumped up from her seat. “You’re a genius! I didn’t even think of that.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m all old-timey, jeez.” She measured out sugar into the mugs and added, “Just kidding.”

  Joan slammed her phone down on the table a moment later. “Dammit, he has his turned off. It won’t show me anything.” She held her head in her hands. Oh Victor, what have you done?

  Mere put the mug in front of her and sat opposite. “Chère, don’t worry so hard. That man loves you. He’s no fool—well, maybe about this land business—but with you, no. There is no woman alive that should make you nervous.”

  * * *

  Now Joan stood in the kitchen, that same bundle of dry raspberry leaves bound with red twine hanging from the curtain rod, dry as bones, brittle as chalk. A thick rope of longing looped through her muscles, over and under her spine. Mere, I need you so bad right now.

  She went to the back of the trailer, to her grandmother’s bureau, and took three items: a deck of playing cards held by a length of
red ribbon, a small nub of bound sage and the Swiss Army knife Mere had ordered for herself online. Boy, she’d been so proud of that. She’d waited for the Amazon delivery guy up at the road for days. Then she made her way back to the house to finish packing.

  She checked the alarm clock on the nightstand—almost six. It might be too late to make the service in Hook River. But maybe she could wait out the groupies and the lonely lingering in the makeshift parking lot afterwards, along with the extra-holy who volunteered to clear the snotty tissues and boot-print mud cakes from the floor, and catch the Reverend on his own. And then she would know for sure.

  She tucked Mere’s three items into her bag and carried it into the living room, chucking the boy on the shoulder. “Come on, Zeus, we gotta hit the road.”

  7

  THE MEMORY OF WANT

  On the drive to Hook River, Zeus plugged Joan’s phone into the stereo system so he could DJ. He’d introduce the songs, then pause them mid-stream to provide trivia. “Trent Reznor wasn’t going to let Johnny Cash even do ‘Hurt.’ He thought it was too gimmicky. But after it was done he agreed the song belonged to Cash now—that he could never do it better.”

  “Good to know, Zeus.”

  “It’s a big deal. He, like, sacrificed one of his most famous songs because Johnny just, like, marinated it.”

  “Marinated it?”

  “Yeah, like he soaked it in Cashness and made it completely his own.”

  “Gross.”

  “It’s true, though. You can’t take the eggs out of a cake after it’s been baked. Same thing. You can’t un-Cash a song that’s been Cashed.”

  “Just play it, you nerd. Or I’m going to put the radio on.” She reached over and made a half-hearted attempt to wrestle the phone from his hand.

  “Okay, okay.” He pressed play and settled back in his seat. An hour from their destination, he fell asleep.